NASA plans robotic mission to the HST

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-08-10 04:55pm

Aug. 10, 2004 — NASA engineers got the thumbs up on Monday to start planning a robotic mission to rescue the Hubble Space Telescope.

Late last week, Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which helps it look at black holes and faraway galaxies, broke.

NASA chief Sean O'Keefe told engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland to plan a way to repair the instrument and to install two new instruments — a sophisticated camera and a spectrograph. They had been scheduled for delivery by a 2006 space shuttle mission to the telescope that was canceled in January.

"Everybody says, 'We want to save the Hubble' — well, let's go save the Hubble," O'Keefe said. "Rather than just sitting there and talking about how we think we're going to do it, we've got an option we're ready to go with."

The agency chief said the mission, which wouldn't happen for at least three years, would cost roughly $1 billion to $1.6 billion. A plan will take nine months to a year to formulate, he said.

NASA has been searching for a way to fix Hubble ever since O'Keefe in January cancelled a shuttle servicing mission to the space telescope, sparking an outcry from the science community.

After the loss of shuttle Columbia in February 2003, O'Keefe doesn't want to risk any more astronauts' lives.

If it's not serviced, Hubble will perish in around 2008 as its stabilizing gyroscopes fail and its batteries drain.

"Everybody's delighted," Bruce Woodgate, a NASA scientist at Goddard who was at the meeting yesterday afternoon, told the Baltimore Sun.

Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, isn't scheduled to be launched until at least 2011.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2004-08-10 05:04pm

It would truly be a fantastic technical achievement if they pulled it off.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2004-08-10 09:04pm

Howedar wrote:It would truly be a fantastic technical achievement if they pulled it off.

Not to mention a watershed event in the use of robot probes in colonization...

LMSx · Post by **LMSx** » 2004-08-10 09:10pm

The article skimmed over the actual robots-are these new, and were the robots impossible to launch before?

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2004-08-10 11:21pm

I'll believe it if it happens and not a moment before. It sounds far too pie-in-the-sky for the funding to actually go through.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-08-11 03:01am

It would be a great achievment in robotics if it succeds.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-08-11 03:13am

A billion fucking dollars? Fuck this shit, lets just send a shuttle up and SAVE money.

Robotics are supposed to save us fukcing monyy, not cost as much as
a fucking manned mission.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2004-08-11 03:48am

Think of the astronauts!!!1

As if they are completely ignorant of the inherit risks of spaceflight. We have to treat them like children you know, they certainly aren't capable of weighing the risks vs. the rewards and deciding that they're willing to launch.

Icehawk · Post by **Icehawk** » 2004-08-11 04:09am

Bah, just let it die I say, Hubble has served us well enough. Focus the money on the new space initiative and the actual Hubble replacement.